Ivy Bridge Macs

Ivy Bridge Macs

Alex Brooks at World Of Apple has published an interesting and detailed analysis of Intel’s Ivy Bridge processors and Apple’s possible timeframe for Mac refreshes this year.

In 2012 Intel’s new architecture is named Ivy Bridge, on a technical level the architecture marks a huge leap from the previous Sandy Bridge taking advantage of a 22 nm die shrink process. Some other headline improvements over Sandy Bridge include PCI Express 3.0 support, integrated USB 3.0 and the use of tri-gate transistors (sometimes known as 3D transistors) which offer the same performance as their “2D” counterparts but are said to offer up to 50% less power consumption. Apple may choose not to be cutting edge with all the technologies available in Ivy Bridge as the company tends to enjoy setting its own trends.

Brooks’ post includes a list of candidates for the new CPUs in the Mac mini, iMac, Mac Pro, MacBook Air, and MacBook Pro product lines. Check it out here.

This year’s much rumored Mac hardware upgrade would be, according to ongoing speculation, a thinner, completely redesigned 15-inch MacBook Pro that was originally reported last year ahead of the iPad 2′s launch. The rumor of a 15-inch MacBook Air/redesigned MacBook Pro has constantly surfaced throughout 2011, with most recent rumors indicating such machine carrying an Ivy Bridge CPU was “inbound” for April. Meanwhile, tests performed on the Ivy Bridge processor likely to be used in the MacBook Pro family showed significant improvements.

For first impressions on Ivy Bridge, check out AnandTech’s review of Intel’s Core i7 3770K CPU.